white house

In January, the U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier as director of the White House Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and since the end of the partial federal government shutdown, the director and office have produced informative reports and speeches. Two common threads through these sources are emphases on continued American leadership in key tech sectors — and that this leadership will increasingly occur in conjunction with, or under the direction of, private industry.

In honor of National Manufacturing day last week, the Trump administration released the Strategy for American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing. Developed in partnership with the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the report is intended to outline the administration’s vision for American leadership in advanced manufacturing across industrial sectors. It advocates pursuing three goals: develop and transition new manufacturing technologies; educate, train, and connect the manufacturing workforce; and, expand the capabilities of the domestic manufacturing supply chain.

In an executive order issued last month, President Trump wrote that the nation is facing a skills crisis. In response, and in order to develop “a national strategy to ensure that America’s students and workers have access to affordable, relevant, and innovative education and job training that will equip them to compete and win in the global economy,” the president established a National Council for the American Worker. That focus on skills and the future workforce was also present in two recent reports (one from the National Skills Coalition and the other from an independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]) urging action on the topic.

On July 31, OMB Director Mike Mulvaney distributed a memo outlining eight priority R&D subjects and five practices for leveraging R&D resources more effectively. The White House intends for the memo to serve as guidance in the development of budget submissions from the executive departments and agencies for FY 2020.  Basic and applied research are to be emphasized in the agency R&D plans, which would be a shift from data on recent trends released by the National Science Foundation the day before the Mulvaney memo. NSF found that the development side of R&D in the FY 2017 federal R&D obligations, passed in May of the first year of the Trump administration, increased by 7 percent from the year prior, while research expenditures actually declined by 3 percent.

After a record-long delay, President Donald Trump this week announced his intent to nominate a director for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — Kelvin Droegemeier, who is the current secretary of science and technology for the state of Oklahoma. The announcement has generated excitement within the science and tech community, and C. Michael Carolina, executive director of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) called Droegemeier the “perfect choice.”

The White House Office of Management and Budget released Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century, a plan for reorganizing federal agencies. On topics related to innovation, the wide-ranging plan would make changes to education, workforce, economic development, small business and more. Some of the suggestions could advance with administrative actions only, while many will require congressional support. As with previous initial proposals from the administration, this document does not provide many of the details necessary to evaluate the real intention and opportunity of each proposal. The actual effects of implementation for many suggestions could range from reduced administrative overhead to funding reductions totaling billions of dollars, for example depending on the interpretation of “consolidate.” These four ideas from OMB have the greatest potential to impact support for innovation economies.

The White House Office of Management and Budget sent a letter directing all agency heads to prepare FY 2019 budget requests with the figures provided in the administration’s FY 2018 request. Because the long-term budget provided few year-over-year changes for science or innovation, the administration will therefore again propose to eliminate Regional Innovation Strategies, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, much of the SBA’s entrepreneurial development funding and other innovation programs, while also making deep cuts to many R&D initiatives. Read SSTI’s full coverage of the administration’s FY 2018 budget request for more information.

Earlier this month, the White House released an executive order to expand apprenticeship programs and to study other federal workforce initiatives. The administration will attempt to reduce regulations for “effective” efforts while reducing funding for other programs. The Washington Post reports that the administration seeks to increase apprenticeship funding to $200 million through reallocation of workforce spending.

U.S. Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Gary Peters (D-MI) sent a letter requesting a 4 percent increase in appropriations for the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Government offices focused on innovation have been around for several years, yet some states and even the federal government are seeking new ways to incorporate the concept into their offices. This week the White House announced a new Office of American Innovation, while earlier this month Rhode Island used its Office of Innovation to launch a new effort called the  Government Innovation League, and in January Ohio’s governor proposed funding a new state office focused on innovation, emerging technologies and their job-creation potential.